To make the cake band (Part 1)

Easter Parade
Use your cross stitch skills to create this Easter cake band – Jan Eaton’s design will transform the simplest of cakes into something really special.
Celebrate Easter in style by making as embroidered hand to decorate the outside of your Easter cake look rally special, add fluffy chicks or miniature chocolate eggs to the top of the cake and present it on a silver cake board or raised cake stand.
You can also adapt the design to make your own cross stitch greeting card – on a piece of graph paper, draw out the words ‘Happy’ and ‘easter’, placing them centrally one below the other and separated by three grid squares. Draw a line round the words in the same way as one the cake band chart, then draw a chick at each side of the lettering. Reverse one chick so that the two chicks face each other. Embroider the chart several time on 14 count fabric and mount in ready-cut green or yellow greeting cards.

You will need
To make the cake band

• 10cm wide strip of cream 11 count Aida large enough to fit round your cake, plus 10cm for the overlap.
• One skein of DMC Stranded Cotton in each of the following colours; yellow 444, grass green 701, red 606, kingfisher blue 995
• Tapestry needle size 24
• Crewel needle size 7
• Tacking thread in a dark colour
• Sewing needle
• Cream sewing thread
• Two glass-headed pins

Step by step

Step 1
Work a row of tacking down the centre of the strip, lengthways and widthways, mark the centre of the chart with a soft pencil.

Step 2
Work the design in cross stitch and back stitch from the chart. Work outwards from the centre using three strands of thread in the tapestry needle throughout and remembering that each coloured square on complete cross stitch worked over one woven block of fabric . Finish the embroidery about 2cm from each end of the strip.

Step 3
Add an eye to each chick by working a French knot in the centre of the chick’s head using three strands of kingfisher blue thread in the needle.

Part 2